Progress & Conservation🔰
1 min readJul 17, 2023

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There's not really any evidence of that. It's most likely actually a reference to homosexuality. The word ἀρσενοκοῖτης here may be a neologism but it's pretty clearly one drawn from Leviticus 18:22 in the Greek Septuagint translation: καὶ μετὰ ἄρσενος οὐ κοιμηθήσῃ κοίτην γυναικός, where the context is condemning homosexuality. The intended meaning seems to clearly be men who have sex with men. Unfortunately, Paul inherited prejudices from his cultural and religious background.

Sure, Paul is also condemning temple prostitution and other forms of "sexual immorality" in the greater context of the passage but the word here seems to mean "men who have sex with men" with no connotation of whether or not that is in the context of a committed relationship or prostitution. It wouldn't have even made sense for Paul to create this neologism to refer to temple prostitutes because there were already words for that in Greek and Paul clearly is familiar with those words because he uses them, one of which he uses in the same sentence as this neologism "arsenokoites," so it seems like he's intentionally trying to condemn homosexuality in addition to temple prostitution and sexual immorality in general.

Any attempt to liberalize Christianity must start with a recognition that the Bible is a book written by fallible men when prejudices and flaws like all other men. I disagree with Paul's homophobic bigotry but I'm fairly certain that homophobic bigotry is precisely what is on display here in 1 Corinthians.

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Progress & Conservation🔰
Progress & Conservation🔰

Written by Progress & Conservation🔰

Buddhist; Daoist, Atheist; Mystic, Darwinist; Critical Rationalist. Fan of basic income, land value tax, universal healthcare, and nominal GDP targeting.

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